A Modest Proposal To Help AMC Out Of Its Programming Tailspin

Things are not going well over on AMC these days. Despite the fact that The Walking Dead is the biggest show on cable, profits for the network slipped 12 percent in the last quarter and most of that has to do with the network’s inability to find a new hit. Breaking Bad is over, Mad Men is heading into its final season after a ratings slip in the first half, and the network hasn’t had a break-out hit since The Walking Dead. On top of that, they’re spending millions on new shows and they aren’t panning out.

After a promising start, The Killing had a steep drop in the ratings and was cancelled twice (before being picked up by Netflix for a fourth and final season). The third season finale of that show ended with 1.5 million viewers. Low Winter Sun debuted after Breaking Bad in its final season with 2.51 million viewers but was cancelled after the first season finale fell to meager .63 million viewers. Hell on Wheels gets a modest 2 million viewers (on Saturdays), but there’s no buzz surrounding that show. Turn debuted in April with a lousy 2.1 million viewers, and the most recent episode has already fallen to 1.3 million viewers, which is actually BETTER than the 1.2 million viewers who tuned in to the premiere of the heavily promoted Halt and Catch Fire.

Granted, the 1.2 million viewers that watched the premiere of Halt and Catch Fire do not include those who watched the pilot episode during the two-week preview period, in which AMC had released it onto the Internet, and ratings will obviously pick up once DVR viewership is accounted for (Mad Men regularly doubled its viewership once DVR viewers were taken into account). Still, that has to be a huge disappointment, especially for what I thought was the best pilot on AMC since The Killing.

But there is potentially an easy solution to AMC’s woes, and it wouldn’t be difficult to implement.

AMC should give up on Sundays.

There’s just too much competition on Sunday nights. HBO regularly dominates that night in cable, the networks throw some of their best dramas into the competition, and Showtime usually has something solid on Sunday nights, as well. There’s too many f**king options, and AMC’s shows continue to suffer due to the multitude of great choices. Game of Thrones all by itself has basically sucked all the attention away from Mad Men, Turn and now Halt and Catch Fire.

Sunday night IS HBO’s night.

I understand that when a series airs is not as important as it once was thanks to time shifting because, but it does matter when it comes to buzz, hype, and promotion, or the things that help a television series grow. It’s difficult to raise awareness about a series when, on Monday morning, all anyone can talk about is the latest death on Game of Thrones. There are fewer recaps, think pieces, and break-outs on AMC’s shows simply because online media is focussed on HBO’s shows on Monday morning.

And yet, we have much less to talk about on Tuesday morning because overall programming isn’t as good on Monday nights. Look: HBO/Showtime own Sunday nights. FX has built a nice little niche on Tuesday nights with Fargo, Sons of Anarchy, and Justified, and the broadcast networks generally dominate on Thursday nights. AMC could give up on Sundays, and simply plant their flags on Monday and completely own that night as far as prestige drama goes. Monday is, after all, the second most viewed night in television (120 million viewers) behind only Sunday (125 million), and there’s only one program — Monday Night Football — that offers that much competition, and that’s only on 16 weeks of the year, and during those months, AMC runs The Walking Dead anyway, which holds its own just fine against Sunday Night Football.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Turn, but I probably would’ve given more of my attention to it if its only real drama competition was The Blacklist. Low Winter Sun might have fared better against The Following or Almost Human or Castle, and Halt and Catch Fire is a much better alternative than the return of 24, the only real competition (besides Louie) on Monday nights. And if Halt and Catch Fire had premiered last night instead of Sunday night, I’d probably be talking about that show this morning instead of the ratings woes of AMC.

It’s a frequent complaint we hear on the Internet: There’s too many shows on Sunday nights. Collectively, we just don’t have enough bandwidth to devote to all those programs. If AMC vacates that night for Monday, it would not only boost AMC’s ability to cut through the competition, it would also allow shows like Penny Dreadful, Veep and Silicon Valley to attract the eyeballs that might have otherwise have been devoted to Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire.

AMC has some really promising shows on the horizon: Knifeman, Galyntine, Better Call Saul, the Walking Dead spin-off, and Seth Rogen’s adaptation of Preacher, among others. I think they’d all have a much better chance at succeeding if they weren’t competing with Game of Thrones, The Leftovers, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, True Detective, and some of the promising dramas they have on tap like Brink, Utopia and Westworld. Selfishly, I wish AMC would move their original dramas to Monday nights, too, because staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to watch everything that HBO, Showtime, and AMC airs is a pain in the ass.

It’s good for AMC. It’s good for the Internet, and it’s good for the viewers. EVERYBODY WINS. Please call your Congressman. Let’s make this happen.

@Enrico Pallazzo I also have a theory that showrunners are actively avoiding AMC now. They kept cutting budgets on all of their hit shows and the execs are notorious for being difficult to work with. So the shows that the network does get a chance at are sub par at best.

If you want to be part of the online discussion, or the water cooler talk at your office (to the extent that still exists, it does with Game of Thrones and a few of my colleagues though), you have to watch it the night it airs. For most shows, sure, watching it days or even weeks later doesn’t make a difference. But the Sunday shows are usually the buzzworthy shows, hence the suggestion to spread out the love.

Breaking Bad and Mad Men were far from ratings hits in their first few seasons. In fact Breaking Bad cracked only 2 million viewers once before the 5th season. Mad Men averaged 900k viewers for its first season and wasn’t consistently above 2m viewers until the 4th season.

I think NBC probably had similar thoughts with Hannibal on Friday nights. Not that the ratings are great, but not having to compete with the other heavy-hitters on Sunday nights probably helps with renewals.

Sadly Hannibals ratings are crap because Friday is a dead zone for tv. However, if NBC actually knew how good Hannibal was and put it on Monday and really pumped it, I’m willing to bet it would do a shit ton better then it is

@Duchess I did. At the time I had a roommate that had retail hours, so his schedule would vary. I get to work from home often. So, there would be days where he would be watching First Blood or something on AMC and there were commercials for Breaking Bad for months before it premiered. I thought it looked interesting so I decided I’d give the pilot a shot. It immediately became one of my favorite shows and quickly became my favorite as the first season went on.

Granted I don’t know anyone else besides my roommates from that time that watched it from the beginning. All my other friends got into it when I forced it down their throats, handing them the Blu-Rays and yelling “WATCH THIS” to them until they finally would. Then they all were hooked too.

Amc needs to get rid of crap like comic book men and the security show and invest in better writing for there new shows. They also need to drop the damn cut and paste plotlines that plague most of there shows.

Maybe they just need to make better shows? I couldn’t even finish the premiere of Turn. It moved slower than molasses in January and gave me nothing to care about. I wasn’t even clear on whether the British or the Americans were the villains or if they both were or what

They make terrific shows for people who who want the cable experience without paying for premium cable. Unfortunately that’s me and 1,100,999 others, I guess. Halt and Catch Fire is Rubicon terrific at the very least.

Monday is not a good night, as Monday Night Raw pulls in fairly large numbers as well. The WWE power was so much in the late 90s that the Oscars switched from being aired on Monday night to a Sunday night.

HACF sucks. It sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks. And this is coming from an I.T. professional (born in the early 80’s) who thirsts for ANY drama that might so whimsically incorporate computers into its platform.

It is almost impossible to make a show about technology and its emergence in the 1980’s appear contrived and cliche to me, but somehow, AMC has managed the impossible?

*shakes head*

Just an awful, worthless show in every conceivable way.

Please cancel, so that the next brave soul to further the genre isn’t laughed out of existence prior to creation.